“What were you expecting it to be like?”
I am on the phone with someone who has managed to become a huge part of my life in a short amount of time, with the hope that somehow this call will soothe my anxieties pertaining to the choice I made back when I was a bright-eyed twenty-two year old girl who was certain about her future and the plans she thought up in her head.
Go back to school, move back home, pursue Graphic Design, graduate, move back to LA.
Those were the plans I set out for myself to follow in order to pursue studying a passion of mine.
That was three years ago.
I enrolled back into school, returned home, and declared my Graphic Design major which is currently in progress. However, the certainty I had in regards to pursuing this passion of mine has dwindled away slowly with each semester that passes by.
I am sitting in the stairwell of my school’s art building, talking to a special someone who’s managed to learn about me as a person down to the core of my existence, when the reply to his question comes out,
“I thought it would be fun, I thought I was always going to love it.”
With each semester that has managed to pass by my interest and passion towards graphic design has wavered and diminished slowly but surely. Could it be that I misunderstood what graphic design entailed? I knew it wasn’t art, I knew it wasn’t arbitrary. The field is based around solving issues through the beauty of design, and even though the solutions themselves are intangible, the principles that surround the profession are very much concrete.
As a designer, you have to be aware about the way your design is communicating a message to the general public. You have to keep in mind what it is you want to communicate first and foremost which deals with hierarchy, proportions, emphasization. You have to make it visually interesting through repetition, rhythm, patterns, or contrast. Most importantly, you must keep in mind a sense of balance throughout the entire design whether it be through white space, movement, alignment, and so much more. Design is more than making a pretty picture, it is calculated down to the finest details to ensure a message is being relayed to the masses in a way that is decipherable and engaging enough.
Most people mistake graphic design as art, and although these two fields share some of the same qualities and principles, graphic design deals with problem solving whereas art deals with emotion. You can’t sell a product based on an emotional design. You can however, sell art based off emotional responses. People buy art because they like what they see based off how it makes them feel. People buy designs because they like what they see based off how it looks. I’ve never bought a design because it made me think about a core memory from my childhood, but I’ve bought art in hopes of it transporting me back to a memory in which I’ve visited a foreign country.
I should have just majored in English.
A sentiment that has lingered in my head since I transferred over to my current school where my love for design has somehow diminished.
I miss who I used to be, I miss my hobbies. I miss writing.
Writing has always been a way for me to recount moments I’ve experienced; memories I love and cherish so much that I feel a need to immortalize them through the beauty of writing. I can make the most seemingly mundane thing into a detailed story that piques the interest of someone.
I can recall the moments I walked down New York City streets two summers ago and detail the murkiness of the humidity that surrounded me and made each step I’d take feel like I was walking through a sauna.
I remember the moment in which I stood on the balcony of the apartment I stayed at when I was in Rome in the early hours of the morning while the rain softly landed upon my existence and made me feel substantial.
I remember the sounds of my heels click-clacking down the sidewalk in the early hours of my birthday and looking down the empty street at the brightly lit Angel of Independence as I walked alongside someone that made me feel hopeful towards the future.
I remember crying on the plane after the trip ended, because I somehow knew that my life as a twenty-five year old woman would change and become different.
I remember the night in which I declared I would find love whether it was within myself or in another and a year later it happened: I found it both ways.
I remember the drunken call I made during New Years Eve to the person who has managed to take up a big portion of my life, and saying those three little words I had been wanting to say for the longest time, “I love you.”
We hadn’t officiated our relationship yet, but I knew this person was the person I wanted to give my heart to.
All these memories and so many more, which are new, old, repeated stories, untold excerpts, and things I would like to write down as secrets in order to cherish them more. All these things I would like to revisit again through my writing which nowadays I am unable to due to my busy schedule.
I am twenty-five and unsure of my future again.
“I see how you are when you’re inspired and then when you lose it, you just shut down and retreat into yourself.”
Creative blocks I have been experiencing more often this past year and it’s only March, but to be fair I’ve been feeling burnt out since my last semester, only now it has become more prominent.
I miss my hobbies.
I miss photography, I miss videography. I miss reading.
Most of all I miss writing.
I miss living through the multiple passions I have.
“Remember what it was to be me. That is always the point.”
A Joan Didion quote I recite in my head when I miss who I used to be.
I do not recognize this version of myself, but I so desperately want to remember what I was like a year ago before my passion became less glimmery and more serious.
I want to remember what it was like to be in love my passion before I decided to make it my career choice. I want to remember what it was like to enjoy designing.
Suddenly, I remember why I ultimately decided to not pursue a career in which writing would become my source of income.
Writing will forever and always be sacred to me, and I do not want to lose the love I have towards it.
Nothing can ever be perfect, but I so desperately want it to be.
